Schumann & Schubert
Queen’s Hall, 27/3/25
Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Isabelle van Keulen, director/violin
There’s a very large audience in the Queen’s Hall for tonight’s Scottish Chamber Orchestra concert directed by Dutch violinist, Isabelle van Keulen. She is the soloist in Schumann’s rarely performed Violin Concerto and conducts the thirty-seven strong orchestra in works by Beethoven, Jessie Montgomery and Schubert.
Beethoven’s ‘Coriolan Overture’ was written in response not to Shakespeare’s ‘Coriolanus’ but to a recent play about the Roman general by Joseph van Collin which Beethoven much admired. The eight-minute overture encapsulates the drama, poignancy and tragedy of the work. Its striking opening of repeated chords interrupted by precise pauses is handled efficiently by Isabelle van Keulen’s conducting before the lower strings rush in with a sense of foreboding. A more lyrical theme, possibly evoking the love of Coriolanus’ wife and mother follows, but that too is swept away by the sounds of battle. I imagine that one of the main markings on this score is sforzando (with sudden force), as these outbursts, often accompanied by timpani, occur throughout the whole overture, until after a reiteration of the dramatic opening sequence of precise chords and pauses, the piece dies away. The practice of beginning every concert with an overture has largely gone, but it’s a way both of revisiting old favourites and introducing less familiar works by well-known composers (like the Haydn Overture a few weeks ago).
Robert Schumann’s fragile mental health led to his admission to a sanitorium in 1854, two years before his death there at the age of 42. He had completed his Violin Concerto in 1853, but its dedicatee, violinist Joseph Joachim, declined to play it. Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, a close friend of the family, agreed with Joachim that the concerto was not worthy of the composer. It was omitted from the complete edition of his works and deposited in Berlin’s State Library, with the proviso that it not be played for 100 years. In the event (and the full story is entertainingly told by David Kettle in the SCO programme) the concerto’s first performance, attended by Adolf Hitler, was in 1937.
Isabelle van Keulen faces the orchestra to begin the first movement: a vigorous opening theme for full orchestra is followed by a gentler section dominated by the flute. The soloist enters accompanied by strings and elaborates the opening theme in an exploratory and sometimes tentative fashion. Although there are no solo cadenzas in this concerto, the violin’s dominance of these string-only sections in rhythmically fluid passages with interesting chords have a similar impact in showing the composer’s and the soloist’s skill. These sections alternate with heavier orchestral passages, which by the end of the first movement sound rather stodgy. In the slow movement the violin and lower strings predominate in a delicate quiet melody and this leads without a pause into the final movement, marked lively but not too fast (Schumann uses German terms). For the first time the violin plays with the orchestra and there’s more subtle interplay here than in the first movement. There’s much to enjoy in this work, and, while there’s sometimes a static and heavy-handed quality in the orchestral writing, it’s a pleasure to hear Isabelle van Keulen, especially in these imaginative cadenza-like sections.
After the interval, Jessie Montgomery’s 2012 work ‘Starburst for string orchestra’ does exactly what it says on the tin: it’s five minutes of delightful quicksilver movement, and a splendid appetiser for Schubert’s Symphony No 3 in D Major. Written when the composer was eighteen, and packed with youthful energy and wit, it has in spades the variety which was sadly lacking in Schumann’s orchestration in his violin concerto. Seemingly effortlessly Schubert writes woodwind themes which pass around the flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons and lets us hear the rasping tones of the natural horns. The first movement soon breaks free of its adagio maestoso opening, as clarinets and flutes lead the move into allegro con brio. Good humour, rhythmic invention and perky woodwind tunes give a sense of a Rossini or Donizetti comedy. The allegretto second movement is cheerful and scarcely any slower, while the foot-stomping off-beat minuet is held in check by a thoughtful oboe melody in the trio. The presto final movement is an enjoyable race, with several opportunities to admire the fine horn and trumpet playing. Isabelle van Keulen’s conducting brings out all the humour and youthful enthusiasm in the score. The applause for the Schumann earlier was respectful, but it’s much more enthusiastic now.
This season SCO has played a number of works written by composers in their teens, all showing an already well-developed sense of musicality. Next week’s concert, a matinee at 2pm on Thursday 3rd April features four works by teenage composers, Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto, Richard Strauss’s Symphony No 1 and ‘Serenade for Strings’ and also the Scottish premiere of Symphony No 1 by Tsotne Zédginitze – born in 2009.
